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Rather than return home to work at my local golf course (greatest…job…ever) for another summer, I decided to get myself an internship this year. I make it sound like I just went up to a random company and said “hey I’ll take an internship” and they were like “well sure!”. In reality, this pretty much sums up my life from September to February of last year…

However, after I had filled out so many applications that I didn’t even read the boxes I filled in anymore, I simply knew the order they would ask for my information, I finally got offered a position as an Applications Engineering Inter at a company you have never heard of! (It’s called Nordson if you want to look it up so that you can say you have heard of it now)

Now, I could go into detail about what I do at my job, and maybe someday I will, but that sounds almost as boring to write as it would be to read. Instead, let me tell you some things that I found out that I wasn’t expecting. I’m not sure these apply to every company, but I’m going to pretend like they do. My blog, my rules.

First of all, there are abbreviations for everything that needs one, and then there are some for things that don’t need one as well. Here is an example of a perfectly legitimate sentence in my workplace. “I went to see the UV AE from ICS to ask about the PRD for AMAT but he was on PTO so I couldn’t, LOL.” Some of them I already knew, some I learned pretty quick, but others I still don’t know and just sort of nod my head at.

Next, projects that we work on only become a big deal once the cost of them hits 6 digits. This one I’m sure varies at other companies, but here anyway, systems that we build that are, oh you know $30,000, are hardly worth paying attention to. Once things are priced over $100,000, people start to give it some attention. Occasionally we sell some large systems that go into the millions, but those are a little more rare. Either way, as a college student who still picks up nickels on the street (but not pennies, I’m better than that), anything over $20 sounds like a lot of money.

Finally, a lot of the people there aren’t the super hardworking, mature, focused adults I pictured. My first Friday there, a group of people that I work with asked if I wanted to ditch work with them for a bit to go out to a local joint for breakfast paid for by the company. They make jokes and poke fun at each other. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t think they would be robots that didn’t have a sense of humor, but I feel like they are really no different than me.

So far it has been a pretty good experience, so I can’t complain too much. Except the whole getting up at 6:15 am, you bet your pantaloons I can complain about that